One winter night over dinner with close friends in Hillsborough, I said, “What if we all went to Puglia?” That afternoon, I’d come across a listing for a palatial and evocative villa outside Monopoli. Ed looked at me: What? We hardly ever travel with friends.
“Monopoli. Where’s that?” one said.
“Mid-Puglia below the spur but above the stiletto heel,” I explained. “We were near there in March. In May, the weather should be perfetto.” Ed pulled up the villa photo on his phone. Curly iron gates, an allée leading to the grand villa of long windows, a glass loggia, and a façade of dark oxblood stucco, peeling just enough to give an aura of decadent romanticism.
Ed and I have been to Puglia four times; still not enough. We talked Puglia. The crystalline water, massive olive trees, the vegetable-centered cuisine, Romanesque churches, stone walls crisscrossing the landscape, perched white villages that let you know the Greeks once lived there. What fun to share it with good friends. We drank a lot of red wine. We decided YES.
FIVE MONTHS LATER we all meet in Rome, where Ed has found a house that I could move right into. Three stories, refined taste, comfortable. I know I’d like the owners though I’ll never meet them. The dining room says who they are: a long walnut table with candlesticks and epergnes piled with fresh fruit, walls like buttercream frosting, old portraits, window seat with apricot velvet pillows, sideboard full of good linens.
We’re near Piazza Navona but on a quiet street near one of my favorite small churches, Santa Maria della Pace. By day, everyone goes in different directions since some of us never have been before, some have, and one was born here. Ed and I are on a quest to see the many-splendored Biblioteca Angelica and other great historic libraries of Rome. We all buy flowers, wine, cheeses. At seven, we meet for drinks in the living room—three roomy sofas—then proceed to dinner. In warm mid-May, we can eat outside at Santa Lucia, at Pier Luigi, on the terrace of Hotel Raphaël, and at sidewalk trattorias.
For the third day, we’ve arranged a seven A.M. tour of the Vatican libraries and galleries, and the Sistine Chapel. We get to enter before opening hours. This works well with the art galleries—we’re almost alone—but we’re bustled right along, as other private groups are bringing up the rear. We get a few moments alone with Caravaggio’s Deposition. I have always loved that long Vatican corridor with the early maps on the walls. It’s a pure delight to see them again after many years. We pause at a coffee bar while our excellent guide lectures us on what we’re going to see. By the time we enter the Sistine Chapel, many other private groups have arrived and soon the floodgates open. We’re treated to guards constantly shouting about no photos. I think of Michelangelo lying on his back on scaffolding, paint dripping down on his face, the cramped position he held for hours. Crushed by now, I think maybe it was better up there than down here. I want out.
Is any meaningful experience with art possible when you are trapped like a chicken in a transport crate? Ed, who suffers at times from claustrophobia, already waits at the exit. “Tell me we never have to come back to the Vatican again.”
A drastic idea. “I promise.”
In the gift shop, we buy a thousand-piece puzzle of the Grand Canal.
WHO DOESN’T FALL in love with Rome? A walk along the Tevere, a raucous lunch at Roscioli, the Spanish Steps, the Pantheon, Antico Caffè Greco’s pastries and coffee, little cakes at MADE Creative Bakery, shopping in Monti and fantastic lunch at Trattoria Monti, wandering Trastevere, a grand finale dinner at creative Il Convivio Troiani.
The four days are gone.
OUR FRIENDS BOARD the train for Brindisi, where a car will be waiting to take them to the villa. We retrieve our car from long-term parking. They arrive before we do.
Here’s our group of merry pranksters:
Susan—cookbook writer, extraordinary cook, nutritionist, and former food editor at Food & Wine, later owner of a book editing and production service. Fascinated by India; lover of Bollywood.
Ann—agent for avant-garde photographers, curates shows, lives in her family home, the oldest house in Chapel Hill, is up on every culinary event, first to appear at the weekly Carrboro Farmers’ Market.
Randall—trial lawyer with a houseful of books testifying to his English-major past. Married to Ann. Articulate with a wry humor.
Robin—former chef and owner of several restaurants, serious interior design talent, and always cooking for twenty or more.
Andrea—head of design at a major telecommunications company, walked the Camino de Santiago de Compostela, reader of books about consciousness and creativity. Married to Robin.
Michael—literary novelist, bon vivant, former head writer for a major soap opera. Just retired from teaching in theater arts.
Francesca—theater designer, recently quit professorship to freelance. Born in Rome to a complex family she’s producing a film about.
ED, SUSAN, FRANCESCA, and Randall, our intrepid drivers, go off to pick up a rental car and groceries. The rest of us unpack and check out the villa. I knew there would be some quirkiness—but now we have a lesson in what photos of a rental don’t show. The huge pool with umbrellas in the photo actually is surrounded by rough tarp-like material. If it gets hot, will it bubble like tar? The formal garden is enchanting with statues and a stone boat in a fishpond, a pergola, and an orangery—but the photo must have been taken twenty years back. In a futile gesture, a few clumps of lurid petunias and geraniums have been installed, probably for our arrival.
The bedrooms are fine, large and square, with antiques, soaring frescoed ceilings, and marble floors. The blankets are ancient mites. Only one bath was shown in the pictures. With good reason. Even the photographed one was only adequate. At least every bedroom has a bath, however primitive and minute. The two grand salons run the width of the house. In the main living room, the owners’ son, who lives on the lower floor, tells us not to sit on the horsehair sofas as the fabric will split. There is nowhere else to sit. The other salon is airy and charming with family portraits, buff marble floor with inlaid concentric squares of ocher marble, and a Venetian chandelier. The Empire furniture, stiff and upright, marching around the perimeter, won’t be comfortable. At least we can sit down. We pull everything in around an oval table where Michael dumps out the jigsaw puzzle we bought after our Sistine Chapel visit. A tall door opens onto another formerly formal garden with a view in the distance of the sea.
The dining room table seats eighteen. (We later find that it’s extended with plywood panels. If you lean on your elbow, the other side flies up.) A playful fresco of a trellis, vines, and birds covers the ceiling. The walls, unfortunately, have been painted in an awful attempt to resemble wood. Angels and dog portraits that commemorate pets must have been painted by an untalented family member.
The kitchen. Let’s not go there yet.
What is lovely: The front door opens into a two-story glass atrium with a marble plaque on the wall testifying in Latin that the villa was built in 1792 for the concept of otium: leisure, friendship, and relaxation. Stone steps ascend through the greenhouse into a foyer. This must have been divine when full of flourishing plants. Now it seems a false kindness to keep the stalky and dusty specimens alive, but barely.
ANN, ANDREA, AND I set the table outside. Limpid late-afternoon light casts its spell on the skeletal garden. I’m worried that everyone is just being polite and they’re seething that I’ve spent their money on this ruin when there are lovingly restored masserie (the old fortified farms) we could have rented for less. But everyone seems excited to be in Puglia. We’re laughing as we cobble together three folding tables. Thrown over them, a white tablecloth I found in a cupboard in the dining room. We set votive candles all along, and a vine of greenery. Mismatched plates and ugly cutlery. It almost looks like one of those clever settings on social media I’ve seen, where someone who wouldn’t consider ironing napkins lays out dish towels, cuts a few twigs and plops them in a jar, spontaneous anti-décor. Oh, contrived and fun.
SUSAN AND ROBIN are throwing something together; the rest of us sit drinking prosecco on a sun-warmed stone wall. Michael and Francesca think we should write a play to perform in the bereft garden. Randall makes his way into the kitchen to find another cold bottle. A chair must be wedged against the refrigerator door because it won’t close. “Do you smell gas?” Susan asks him. “The guy said the stove is brand new.”
“Yes, I do.” Twisting the cork, Randall looks on with alarm. Robin is shaking a pan of sausages over the flame. The kitchen provides a study in inefficiency. I do love the wall of dozens of mid-century aluminum colanders, frying pans, and saucepans. Do not love the cluttered low table that serves as a work space, or the oilcloth-covered table near the sink, which must harbor generations of germs. We layer paper towels over it. Shopping list: sponges, disinfectant, scrubbing powder.
Robin arranges olives, salume, tiny mozzarella balls. Susan improvises with fresh orecchiette, tomatoes, and zucchini. Sausages, salad. Ordinary, but elevated. “How is it that everything tastes amazing?” Ann asks. Toasts into the night. Some quotes from A Midsummer Night’s Dream. Andrea describes the brilliant twentysomething digital designers she mentors. Randall says what he can about a headline case he’s defending. We talk about tomorrow. Monopoli! Far out at the edge of the view, a knife-edge of silver where the moon reflects on the sea.
We drift off to our rooms. A life-size marble woman by the rear entrance, although headless, bids us good night.
We are kept awake by a maniacal kennel of barking dogs across the road.
IN THE MORNING before departing, I go outside and knock on the young heir’s door. He’s sleeping in. Opens an inch and grimaces. “There’s a problem. The dogs. What can you do?”
He squints into the sun. “Oh, sorry. Yes. The dogs. There’s nothing to do. The owners are away. They’ve been barking since October. You get used to it.” He wants to shut the door.
“Isn’t there a caretaker? Can’t you call the police? There must be noise rules in such an exclusive area.”
“No. I’m sorry. There’s nothing I can do.”
And I do know about neighborhood vendettas in Italy. Calling the police on a neighbor might incite a generational war. “Well, I’m sorry, too, must be awful for you, but we need a solution. Otherwise, obviously, we will have to leave. Obviously.”
He suddenly seems awake. “I’ll try.” He frowns. Pesky Americans. Wanting to sleep at night.
MONOPOLI CORNERS THE market on charm. A line of whitewashed houses with blue doors opening onto the equally blue sea. A tanned and hairy man up to his waist in water pulls up a squirming octopus. Harbor of bright boats, green water. Cafés and osterie line the piazza. We come upon a Byzantine rupestrian cave church, dark and mysterious, down a flight of stairs. Under an arch, a shrine painting memorializes the story of roof beams strapped onto a raft. The raft washed in and landed in the harbor in 1117. A miracle: the very wood needed to complete the construction of the cathedral begun ten years earlier. Found on the beams like a gift card, an icon of the Virgin Mary and Child, now displayed in the cathedral, venerated and celebrated with festivals.
We overwhelm the tiny Olio e Vino shop and stock up on good wines and artisan olive oil. Fish lunch outside at Dal Ghiottone. After we eat, and the table is cleared, there comes that moment when, ah, vacation kicks in. Shoulders go down and at the same time a different energy surges forth. We linger over coffee. We have nowhere we have to be other than this ancient village where the air is room temp and the waiter has a megawatt smile you’ve been waiting all your life to see.
Afternoon stretches out. We’re lazy cats, reading, napping, lounging by the pool. Recovering from last night’s dog yapping. Michael types on his lap in an upright chair, legs up on a stool. Under his white straw hat with a black band, he looks like Truman Capote. The edges of the puzzle are finished. The heir comes up with a repairman to see about the gas. Someone has been called about the refrigerator. He has talked to the caretaker and, miracolo, the dogs have been moved. “Imagine,” Ed says, “he’s lived with that racket for months and all it took was a trip across the road.”
AT SIX, WE’RE picked up by Giacomo in his Mercedes van for a trip up to Polignano a Mare. Robin made this dinner reservation months ago. She’d seen a photo of a spectacularly positioned restaurant, so spectacular that we won’t even care if we’re served mediocre food. Like Monopoli, Polignano a Mare is a dreamy white village on the sea. Near the entrance into the old town, we see a statue of Domenico Modugno, who wrote “Volare,” which must be belted out all too frequently at many outdoor bars.
We reach Ristorante Grotta Palazzese by going down, down, down many stairs until we emerge into a cave above the sea. In front, the sunset splendidly splashes the sky with lavish orange and purple, and the water reflects the colors in ripples and swirls. In back of us, a blue grotto. Impossibly gorgeous! Robin orders the best Champagne because why not? When will we ever be in such a setting again?
Raw board: everything pulled out of the water today. Grilled red shrimp, whole fish, glistening oysters that surely must have pearls. The light behind Ed, sitting across from me, appears to emanate from his hair, showing him to be the beatific creature that he is. We are swimming creatures. We are finny and fine. The sky, now fading to nacreous pink. We do not sing “Volare,” although the notes strum through my head as we take photos to remember such a memorable night.
UP AND OUT early. Giacomo will drive us to our far point of the week: Lecce. We’ve reserved at Bros’, the edgy restaurant Ed and I discovered when we were there in March. Once let out in the centro storico, we keep losing each other. “Where’s Ed?” “He’s gone to a bar he liked before near the amphitheater.” “Where’s Ann?” “She’s looking for sunglasses.” Herding cats. We decide to meet at lunch.
Ed and I neglected the cartapesta, papier-mâché, tradition when we were here in March. Today, we visit the small Museo della Cartapesta in the Castello di Carlo V, where the city has collected some of the best examples of the craft. We’re enchanted with the detail of those original artists’ work, with how the figures reveal life at that time through what they wore, work they did. Known as “poor man’s marble,” cartapesta was early arte povera, art made from humble stuff, as their seventeenth- and eighteenth-century materials were rags, glue, plaster, straw, wire.
Now there’s more to it than religious figures and crèche furnishings. At Tonda Design, artisans display statement necklaces and rings. I buy colorful dangling earrings made of squares and circles of cartapesta. Tonda is primarily a furniture and lighting gallery, with very particular objects made from olive and other local woods. Then we meet the exquisite Francesca Carallo in her eponymous art gallery on vico dei Pensini, 1. She’s one of those women with short, stylish hair who make a white blouse and black skirt look chic. She welcomes us like friends and shows her abstract sculptures, two of which are pierced honeycomb wall lamps that cast radiating shadows. She’s apologizing that most of her work is away at a show. I think she must be the new Lecce.
I find La Casa dell’Artigianato Leccese and immediately call Ann. When I described the cartapesta angel I bought here years ago, she wanted to find one. And here they are. I pick three small ones. She’s here in a flash, sporting new sunglasses. There are many angels to choose from. They are artistic, not simpering. Ann finds one in a blue dress she likes—and now must get it home without breaking off a wing.
Bros’! Once again, but more so—more fun to be here with friends to enjoy the zany and creative presentations. Out come the first tastes served on blocks of wood, charcoal, driftwood, even atop a potted olive plant. Behind the pomp, the food is fantastic. Pasta with sea urchins; lentils with coconut and dill; calamari with leeks and miso; duck with apricot sauce; quail with plums and green beans. Several of us order the quail, delightfully presented in nests of straw. They’re plump, glistening gold, legs tied, heads still attached. We have different wines with each course and I never know exactly what we are drinking, except for a Taersìa Negroamaro in Bianco, Duca Carlo Guarini, a Salento wine as ethereal as an angel’s wing. Dessert is called, inexplicably, Fucking Cold Egg. Served in a whacky box covered with graffiti slogans, it looks like a real egg, but tap the top and a sweet crust breaks open. Inside, creamy vanilla custard.
Lunch ends at four. Far south in Italy, where the sun hammers hard, how strongly somnolence can hit after a midday feast. Good thing Giacomo is waiting at the gate.
WE HAD INTENDED to sample country trattorie in the area but when we return from our explorations, we want to stay home. The gas smell is cured in the kitchen, but now has migrated to outside the salon door. No more candles lit at the folding tables, I suppose. The heir is disgruntled that we’ve noticed that a leak has sprung outside. I raid the chests in the dining room and set the tables with vintage linens. Tonight, Michael makes a grand caprese. We don’t want another course. Just the usual flowing prosecco and vino.
SOME OF US want to go to Rudolph Valentino’s birthplace and museum. Others want Bitonto. Can’t we do Castellaneta later, en route somewhere else? It’s in the Taranto province, not on the way anywhere. We pick Bitonto and pile into the cars, Randall following Ed, whose GPS leads us through idyllic groves of ancient olives and past concrete factories and block apartments, finally into Bitonto, big town of 57,000, where parking is a headache.
Finally, we’re standing in front of the Cattedrale di Bitonto, mesmerized by the intricate carved portal and weathered stone griffins standing guard. Over the portal stands that peculiar Christian symbol that always seems to me to belong on an Egyptian obelisk: the pelican. Far-fetched, but the derivation of the symbol comes from the gruesome idea that the bird pecks its own body to feed blood to its young, equaling Christ giving of himself for mankind.
This church repays walking around it: The geometry of the design of the side’s arches and the strange little balcony that connects the church to another building can only be appreciated by circling the sturdy structure. Here’s the classic Puglian Romanesque with a dash of the Moors, partly from the arcades and perhaps because of the palm trees in front.
It’s open courtyard day, a city festa. We can peer into usually gated private living space. Some have left their wash to hang, others use their cortile for cars. A few tend small gardens. By chance, we come upon the Chiesa del Purgatorio. Skeletons flank the door, so anatomically precise that they look articulated. One holds a scythe, the other an hourglass. The hourglass skeleton wears a halo carved with the twelve hours and the phrase NIL IN CERTIUS, nothing is certain. Their unfurling scrolls say QVA HORA NON PVTATIS, you do not know the hour, and VENIAM ET METAM, I come and I finish. Meaning finish you. Above the door, a line of crowned skulls, topped by a frieze of ten people licked by flames. Over the burning ones fly two succoring angels who can lift them to heaven. Nothing subtle about these messages.
Purgatory churches appeared after the Protestants in northern Europe began pooh-poohing the concept of purgatory, and especially the scandal of indulgences, the practice of paying the church for some points toward a quicker ascension into heaven.
Meanwhile, small churches were constructed by confraternities, lay organizations dedicated to prayer, for those trapped in purgatory. Twenty purgatory churches exist in Puglia, concentrated between Manfredonia and Brindisi. Memento mori.
We squeeze into tables at a panini bar at the back of the cathedral. Big sandwiches, a wind with a hint of balm, and a view of this grand memory palace. Carpe diem!
WE SUGGEST A deviation because we loved Ruvo di Puglia in March. My friends must see the graceful Romanesque church built on top of Paleo-Christian ruins, and its Byzantine campanile converted from a watchtower. Everyone agrees and we happily meander around the livable, clean, clean village. As we’re determining the route home, a man backing out of his driveway bumps into Randall’s car. He doesn’t want to give us his insurance information. We note his tag number and dread dealing with the rental agency over this. Luckily, most of the damage wipes away. Then we’re on the highway. When we turn off, we are soon lost on bumpy one-track farm roads. Hard to imagine a better place to be lost: ancient twisted olive trees, grasses that make you want to graze, bountiful yellow and white wildflowers.
OVER A STRAIGHT-FROM-THE-SEA dinner in the piazza in Monopoli, we’re settled in with cold prosecco. The two drivers are proposing that we hire Giacomo for the rest of the day trips. Those who rode in the backseats immediately agree. Divided nine ways, the van seems quite reasonable. Ed calls. Yes, Giacomo is ready for our big food day tomorrow.
GIACOMO ARRIVES, CHEERFUL in his beret, with a crate of cherries from his garden. Once on back roads, we hardly make any progress because we constantly want to stop for a photo. We are in trulli country. “Stop the bus!” we call out, imitating Diane Lane in the Under the Tuscan Sun movie. The beehive-shaped houses are cunningly made of flat stones without mortar. They rise from the land like rounded pyramids. Seeing one, the mind turns on its ratchet, for the shape is out of archetypes, out of prehistory, out of space, out of fairy tales and desert tents. We can’t get enough of them, especially ones in olive groves, or ones that link to two or three others in a wheat field. Elves might march out the door.
There’s a continuum of stone structures in Puglia. Square and low dolmens are the simplest: standing stone slabs, and slab top. Some are thought to be funerary in purpose but no one really knows; they could be shelters. Menhirs, like ancestors of the trulli, are stacked stone structures, often narrowing at the top. The oldest are Neolithic and seem kin to the Nuraghi ruins in Sardinia. Trulli must be durable—we are seeing many.
Obviously, they were made from the building material at hand. Stony fields must be cleared for planting. Make use of the stones. The form, indigenous and inevitable, goes far back into dim history, but the story goes that more recent sixteenth- and seventeenth-century trulli were built for the ease of destroying them. Tax man arriving from the feudal lord or the Kingdom of Naples or whoever lorded over the peasants. Pull the keystone from the top and the trullo collapses. Tax man gone: Rebuild.
Ed has made an appointment for us at La Florida, producer of mozzarella di bufala outside Putignano. As we pull in, we see pens of brown, sweet-faced water buffalo. In an adjacent barn, brand-new piglets. Are they cute? Not to me. They’re basic and determined, snorting and rooting and pushing. The newest water buffalo are kept in individual stalls, each with the birth date on the door. They are cute! The open but roofed pen shelters the milk givers, clean and mildly curious. They come to be petted and look at us with goony brown eyes, their horns swept back as though by wind.
Yes, we see the mozzarella process. Rich bufala milk swirled with rennet until it thickens. This is hands-on. The workers stir with a pole but when the cheese starts to form, their fingers are their tools. As the cheese comes together in the vats, handfuls are scooped out and put in a machine that forms snowballs. They plop back into the water they came from and two women scoop each one, along with some of the milky water, into plastic bags they tie off. I love how long strands are braided underwater to make treccie, plaited mozzarella.
In the retail shop, we fill a cooler with bocconcini, little mouthfuls, burrata, and the softball-size creamy mozzarella we’ve just seen lifted from the vats. Giacomo looks amused that the Americani are enamored of the animals. “Let’s go,” he calls. “There’s too much to see today.” Back in the van, we compare too many photos, later to be deleted, of the faces of the water buffalo.
Ed and I are fans of the Gambero Rosso wine listings and rankings. Each year they do the impossible and select the one best white, red, and sparkling wine. Puglian wines are late to world-class status; this year’s red choice, Chiaromonte’s Gioia del Colle Primitivo Muro Sant’Angelo Contrada Barbatto, 2013, is quite the coup for the region, and precisely for the vineyards of Acquaviva delle Fonti. Tenute Chiaromonte dates back to 1826 but when Nicola Chiaromonte took over the family business in 1998, the winery began to climb the difficult ladder of national reputation. Today, he tells us, they produce about 120,000 bottles a year.
His vines are bush-trained and range from sixty to more than one hundred years old, at an elevation of more than three hundred meters, on very mineral-rich limestone subsoils with thin topsoils of terra rossa, red earth, and clay. Gambero Rosso says: “The Tre Bicchieri and Red Wine of the Year, remains a benchmark for anyone wishing to produce a primitivo that is not just close-woven and fruity, but also elegant and drinkable. Here the nose notes of black berry fruit with spicy nuances usher in a palate whose sturdy alcohol is balanced by fresh acidity and rich flavor.” We get to try their wine with our feet on the exact terroir.
As is typical in Italy, there is no tasting room, per se, but we’re welcomed to a storage building by Nicola, who starts opening bottles. “Deep nose,” he says. We load cases to take to the villa and to Bramasole into the van. As we drive away, I mull over Nicola’s statement on his website: “My parents taught me that the earth is different one inch from another, each one producing a different product. I like thinking that diversity is a sort of richness and a resource which increases the value of human work.” Hmm. Wisdom beyond the subject.
GIACOMO SPEEDS TOWARD Altamura. This is a town worthy of investigation, especially the cathedral. Never mind, today we’re on another quest. Bread. Of all the Puglian bread, none is more revered than Altamura’s, especially Forno Antico Santa Chiara, in operation since 1423, even older than the great Pane e Salute in Orsara, which we visited in March. We dash there, as we’ve lingered long with the water buffalo and the lucky tasting of Chiaromonte. In an arched, cave-like room with a rustic table loaded with flat breads and pizza, two women are shoving the last loaves of the morning into the deep black oven. May we order a few? Yes, come back in an hour. What luck. We take a turn around town, stopping in at Panificio del Duomo, Giacomo’s favorite forno. It’s plain and without romance, but the loaves are righteous and we buy a couple, breaking off chunks of cake-like golden bread with dark brown crust and eating them as we walk.
We have a moment to pause in Piazza Duomo to see Santa Maria Assunta (1423), with its fifteen-rib rose window, a lamb nestled in the center circle. Built by Frederick II, the church’s stunning portal shows a last supper with Jesus seated on the far left rather than in the center of the table laden with beakers, fish, and, of course, bread. Who is that kissing Jesus? A woman? John, his favorite disciple, or is this the kiss of Judas transferred from where it is supposed to have happened, in a garden? How many have paused in this intricate doorway before entering the church to admire the flanking lions, the carved vines growing from urns on the heads of two women?
Ed finds a bright and contemporary restaurant, Tre Archi, where we meet Mina and Peppino, the owners. Most everything served comes from their farm and from local producers and farmers. Sacks of grains, lentils, and beans are available for takeaway and a gleaming case of cheeses tempts us as well. Clusters of tomatoes hang from a rack with dried herbs, and fresh herbs grow in jars on the tables. At a wooden board, a young woman shapes small orecchiette from a mound of pasta. She smiles but doesn’t speak, as she concentrates on the rhythmic beat that turns out the little ears so quickly.
We’re served boards of grilled vegetables and grissini, bread sticks, that raise the bar with their toasty taste of wheat. Some carafes of red and white wine make their way around the table. Of course we order orecchiette, some of us choosing a sauce of fava, some chicory. Ed opts for the pebble-shaped legume cicerchie served with tagliolini. Little known outside the region, cicerchia is a Puglian classic that comes with a caution. Too much of it can cause paralysis, muscle atrophy, or aneurysm. But by discarding the soaking water and eating these delicious peas in moderation, not twice a day for months, cicerchie have nourished the Pugliese for many generations. Since we’re into full lunch mode, we end with silky panna cotta with berries.
We buy cicerchie to take home, along with chickpeas, my favorite, and hustle back to the forno for our giant loaves of bread. Giacomo meets us nearby with the van, which is good because each loaf weighs five or six pounds.
We’re not on the way back to Monopoli. Giacomo takes us on an excursion because it is truly a pity that we are here for only a week when there is so much to see. He insists that we must go to Matera, not far away and unforgettable, even if we just pop in briefly. Once in Puglia, Matera is now located over the border into Basilicata.
He’s right. He stops at a view point outside town. In the distance, we see a strange hive: stacks of cave openings that served as homes, shops, and churches for centuries, then were largely abandoned, and now are being restored as residences, boutique hotels, restaurants, and shops. The strangeness reminds me of Mesa Verde, the ancient Native American ruin. Above, we see the modern town. Giacomo drives into the centro, a leafy and pleasant piazza from which you can clamber down into the cave paths.
Ed and I were here more than twenty years ago, when Matera was dismal and depressing. How it has awakened! The population looks young and vibrant. Girls stroll arm-in-arm and clumps of young men saunter around laughing and carousing. My memory is of old women in black, empty caves that gave me the creeps. Actually, they still kind of give me the creeps. Of all the structures to live in, a cave is bottom of my list.
BACK AT THE villa: downtime. The puzzle is two-thirds done. Francesca tells us about her fascist relatives and their lost estate. I’m reading about purgatory! Michael takes over the kitchen. He presents a gigantic platter of our fresh mozzarella, rolls of bresaola and rucola, and beauteous bursting-with-taste cherry tomatoes. Robin makes bruschette from thick slices of Altamura bread drizzled with the olive oil Bitonto is famous for. With this, naturally, the Chiaromonte wine of the year. Bowls of Giacomo’s cherries. Feast for the gods.
GIACOMO WANTS AN early start. We think he has plans we don’t know about. We’re ready, and soon we are outside Alberobello. As in Matera, Giacomo knows a viewing spot outside town that gives us an orientation to this surreal town of trulli.
He lets us off with a meeting time and point. On one side the district called Aja Piccola, the other, Monti, both with dense concentrations of trulli. Does anyone really live here? When we came to Puglia with writer Ann Cornelisen years ago, she warned, “We are not going to Alberobello. Too touristy. It gives me a headache.” But this trulli town remains above what tourism can discount. The curlicue, cheery lanes lined with the secretive white cones have to enchant anyone with an ounce of imagination.
First fact: the skill of the masons. The dry stone so artfully constructed connects with the world’s first architecture. Trullo comes from Greek tholos, dome, and/or from Latin turris or trullum, which means tower. Oh yes, it’s touristy—but this is a unique place in the world. We see a two-story trullo, and joined pairs called trulli siamesi, Siamese, which have no windows. Ed gets claustrophobia just looking at them. The shops are geared toward kitschy fridge-magnet replicas of the trulli—though we do find quality linen shops and a place with well-made olive wood kitchen spoons. I always marvel at how shop workers manage to stay friendly in heavily tourist areas. At the linen shop, the man who sold attractive dish towels, place mats, and shawls to Ann, Susan, and me was so genuine and personable that we almost were invited home to meet his mother, who makes many of the items for sale. He gave us gifts—ceramic replicas of the tops of trulli. “Put it on your table,” he said. “It’s a symbol of hospitality.” The trulli are topped with finials, usually simple balls, or a crowning shape that looks like Monopoly pieces. I read that status is reflected in the quality of the spire. A cross or star or pyramid showed that the mason had skills. Some cones have white-painted symbols that look like mysterious and portentous fertility symbols and religious signs, but the book I buy in town says symbols were never seen in Alberobello before 1934. They were painted in anticipation of a visit from Mussolini. Old Puglia doesn’t mention Mussolini’s visit but about the symbols in general, says they were crosses, swastika suns (the ancient design had nothing to do with Nazis), hearts, and magic charms for averting evil. In summer, this place must be totally overrun, but in May few people are here.
Between the two trulli areas lies a swath of modern shops and cafés, including one bar with two glass-front fridges lined with fabulous cakes whose whorls of frosting would self-destruct before we could get one back to the villa. I let my eyes eat. So many vivid window boxes of purple and red petunias against the whitewashed walls. How many suggestive doorways can I photograph? There are no ancient women making lace. Doors are shut.
We all gather at Giacomo’s van. We are heading to Ostuni for lunch at La Sommità, where Ed and I stayed in March.
This time, we’re seated at a long table in the walled garden of orange trees and a small pool. What a fantasy! When I travel, I often think, oh, I wish X could be here, X would love this. Now here we are with friends all ready to celebrate.
The food is just as spectacular as it was in March. The great breads and tall, twisted grissini served in a glass vase. You feel healthy just looking at the tender salads of crisp vegetables and tendrils of pea shoots. Someone isn’t happy with her sea urchin pasta but the rest of us are swooning. Guanciale with crackly skin. One dessert looks like an egg. When Andrea cracks it, the sugar crust opens to panna cotta and exclamations of “Oh, how clever.” Another, called “caprese,” resembles that salad but is a ball of panna cotta, and one of chocolate disguised as a tomato. Another chocolate dessert is served on a garden trowel. Like the chef at Bros’ in Lecce, the chef plays amusing tricks. (I do wonder if chefs will tire of this. Isn’t cooking challenging enough without having to dream up fantastic presentations?) After all, it’s a renaissance tradition—spun sugar cages, swans roasted then redressed with their feathers, and birds flying out of cakes.
After lunch, everyone walks around Ostuni before Giacomo urges us on. He has other places he insists we must see. Such a good ambassador for Puglia! But it is already after four. We stop to photograph swaths of wild ginestra, yellow broom, in bloom. Ed and I don’t mention that it’s an invasive intruder at Bramasole. We only get to see the gleaming white hill town of Locorotondo from a distance, and take a brief drive-through at Martina Franca. Yet another reason to come back.
POWERING DOWN! AFTER yesterday’s exploits, we’re ready for beach time. Too bad Robin and Andrea left by train for Roma this morning. Work called…Calling us, cherries and cappuccino for breakfast.
The beach, only fifteen minutes away, is deserted this early, though by eleven a few souls are combing the rocks. Ed meets a man looking for octopus. He wades in and scoops up one from the rocky water then rolls it against rocks to tenderize the flesh. Then he grabs up another, almost as long as his leg. Michael, Francesca, and I walk as far as we can. Others are sitting on towels, listening to the slight tide scrooch in and out.
We wanted only a light lunch but find ourselves at a light-infused waterfront restaurant in nearby Savelletri. Thin pale curtains lift in the slight breeze and the white room takes on the tint of the sea. Mounds of freshest fried fish, whole lobsters that look formidable to deal with, big grilled shrimp, and carafes of cold white wine. The wavering reflections from the turquoise waters make us all appear to be subaqueous.
We drive home through the most ancient olive groves. Ann and I cause a halt so we can run into the field and say hello to a few of the thousand-year-old giant crones that emanate survive, survive. They’re ancient souls writhing out of the earth, their crowns of leaves as green as in their early years. Leaning against one, imagining what this place was the day it was planted…“Let’s go!” we hear them call from the cars.
IN THE LATE afternoon, the owners’ son shows us his family art collection in a romantic building at the back of the garden. We’ve been drawn to the elegance of the ripe-peach stucco façade with faded green shutters, niches for statues no longer there, and a parade of busts along the roof. The place looks as if it could dissolve into a reflection in a Venetian canal. When he opens the door, light floods into a room lined with marble busts on pedestals mounted around the walls. Statesmen, poets, gods. “Roman copies of Greek statues,” he tells us. He has seen them all his life and looks at them affectionately. “There was also an archeological collection, but much of it was stolen and the rest has been moved to a safer location.”
Some of the pedestals are empty. Faded ocher walls with arched marble molding, and fascinating trompe-l’oeil tile floors, blue and yellow squares within squares—dazzling. There are maybe fifty of the astonishing busts and one palest white marble full-size naked goddess with a cherub at her feet.
PEDESTRIAN OF ME for sure, but I whisper to Ann, “If they sold some of these to a museum where someone could see them, they could restore the villa.” As I say this, I am remembering what I know: Italians don’t think that way. That’s American practicality that doesn’t comprehend what comes to you from eleven or twelve generations back. Perhaps he does not at all see the villa as we do.
NO ONE WANTS to drive any more today. When Ed and Randall turn in the rental car, the clerk waves away the info about the accident. “Not worth bothering about” is his surprising reaction. (That’s not going to happen in the United States.) After the long lunch, dinner seems redundant. Ed takes off at nine to pick up pizza. He gets lost in the dark, dark countryside, and we’ve gone through a few bottles of wine while waiting. Our last dinner in the grand old dining room with the planks of the table flying up! Otium was the house philosophy and we certainly have embraced the concept.
A discovery for me: A new context deepens friendship. At home, we have our dinner parties, walks, fund-raisers, birthday parties, etc. Traveling together moves us out of preconception. Though some travel only to confirm their held convictions, this group is ready to be amazed. Seeing what is new gives our friendships new grounds. We’ll be reliving Puglia for years.
“GOOD-BYE, GOOD-BYE,” AS the Lucio Dalla song goes. Andare via e non tornare mai. Go away and never come back. That we won’t; not to this dreaming-in-time villa. But somewhere else? We’re talking about Venice next May. Or what about the Aeolian Islands? The future begins rushing toward us but I’m still saying good-bye to Puglia.
Our car is loaded with wine, bread, bags, all the flours, dried beans, taralli we’re lugging home. Con un foglio d’erbe in tasca te ne vai…“With a blade of grass in your pocket, you leave.”
NOTES:
We missed the Santa Maria del Suffragio, another purgatory church, in Monopoli. It has not only carved skulls on the façade but also full skeletons on the door. Inside hang preserved bodies of eighteenth-century Monopoli officials, plus one desiccated little girl. The figures must look like gruesome piñatas.
Fondazione Rodolfo Valentino in his hometown, Castellaneta: www.fondazionevalentino.it
Ann Cornelisen wrote Torregreca and Women of the Shadows, both of which came out of her experiences living in the south of Italy in the 1950s and 1960s. She spent her last years in Italy in Cortona, where we became friends.